Follow.it falls at first hurdle re. Feedburner replacement

THIS IS NOW A BLOG POST OF TWO HALVES - LAST NIGHT AND THIS MORNING.
Last night I was very frustrated with follow.it which had promised a lot but not delivered as well as it promised. This morning we seem to be approaching something like normal and I'm not feeling so negative.

___________________________________

Last night - after much effort.....

I'm very sorry to all those who have tried Follow.It as a substitute for Feedburner. (i.e. this is an update on my previous post What next for Feedburner email subscriptions?)

This was my message to Follow-It after a very disappointing afternoon trying to get my RSS feed to be recognised in my Follow-It account.

This was AFTER I had paid for the Cool account.

Two more critical comments on another tweet got deleted..... but the person doing the deleting doesn't realise it doesn't delete from my side

Tweets are only deleted from one side - it's still there on my account

I'm NEVER impressed by people who don't pay attention to good customer service.

It now turns out that their response to signing up is neither automated nor very prompt - but might possibly respond to tweets.... ;) (Facebook does - so maybe they do too!)

In addition, in order to transfer more than 100 subscribers you have to PROVE you have them - by taking a photo / screenshot of your Feedburner Page AND contact them separately to get those subscribers brought over. 

But there's no way to indicate that when setting up the RSS feed.

I am, in part, trying to determine whether:

• the feed gets recognised when I publish this post - given I've signed up to subscribe via follow.it - but it does not recognise my blog - nor does it seem to go straight to my blog....
  
• whether to now transfer my subscribers given my growing doubts about follow-it for big accounts
  
• whether to abandon ship and go elsewhere. Mailer Lite and Mailchimp being possibilities - but they will cost more...

UPDATE: I'm feeling better about follow.it this morning. 

• Somebody got my feed set up and it's now on my dashboard. 
• The feed for this post was published - late. I always sign up to my own blogs - because that way I can check if the feed is working! This is what it looks like. It's supposed to arrive within 30 minutes of publication but this one took about 3.5 hours - which is not OK. I'll see what happens today. It might just be the new account bedding in
  

This is what arrived in my inbox late last night

• The statistics also showed up - and are OK - but I'm not getting anything like the detail I got with Feedburner - even with a paid account. I guess that's because follow.it can only count the emails via their set-up whereas Feedburner counted everything from whichever way people subscribed.
• The way it presents in the "read" side of my follow.it account also looks good. See below

 

 

Ponderings on the future

I'm still in pondering on what to do. I think I may run an A/B test and set up my Botanical Art and Artists blog - which has c1k subscribers - with another set-up and see if that works better.

Otherwise, I'm going to have to set up a Patreon account and start subscriptions all over again, but limited to those who pay a very nominal amount to get the blog posts.

I am also thinking along the lines of getting everybody to subscribe again - because I've absolutely no idea how many never open their emails and I'm not keen on paying for subscriptions from people who never open their email!

However do not fear - I have downloaded all current subscribers as a csv file - and will be keeping that safe until such time as I decide where subscriptions or going....

At the moment I've not pulled any hair out but getting close.....

There again maybe I shall go and take another look at Substack which manages to create a much better impression with me and has both free and paid options for followers.

(NOTE: All this within the context that I'm now listed for surgery and am expecting that my ankle fusion operation will take place in the Autumn and I'll then have very limited movement on one leg only for at least three months followed by not a lot more mobility for some months after that - followed by a shoulder replacement - when I'll be doing everything with one hand. So exhibition reviewing is going to be minimal for some time... I'm thinking of switching to art book reviews and getting the art material and tips and techniques websites finished!)